Prometheus Review (with spoilers)

“Who doesn’t want to kill their parents?”

Prometheus, the new film by Ridley Scott, represents not so much a tangential storyline but a retelling of the central story of the Alien franchise. It revisits once again a universe set in the not-too-distant future, one that is distinctly recognizable in its framework (we have capitalism, we have soldiers, we have expanding technological innovation, and we still have terrestrial landscapes such as the northern reaches of Scotland that have been preserved in pristine condition) but in which space travel to distant planets and star systems has become possible. There are familiar human motivations, such as selfishness and a single-minded obsession with power as well as idealism, protective instincts and even self-sacrifice, and these come into play in extraordinary circumstances.

In this movie, as with the other classic by Ridley Scott, Bladerunner, we have once again an interesting theological issue: what if your maker is at best indifferent and at worst hostile to you? What do we make of a world in which artificial life is created but in which the central issue of responsibility and compassion are not addressed? In Bladerunner we had a band of replicants (androids) who had managed to free themselves from bondage as they were approaching the limit of their allotted lifespan, and who travelled back to the homeland (Earth) in an attempt to meet their designer and gain the gift of further life. Their creator was an indifferent man who was unable to appreciate the distinct human urges exhibited by his creations, and was consequently condemned and killed for it. In this case, we have the situation of a humanity confronted with evidence of their extraterrestrial origin, and this occasions the birth of a new faith, one which necessarily involves the hope for redemption.

What would our maker have to tell us if we could meet it? One would hope that they would be able to clear up all the ethical issues that plague us, and bring a clarity of intent and purpose that would signal freedom from ambiguity. One imagines one would seek an explanation for our frailties, for our imperfect world and for the suffering we see in such abundance around us. We who have been so frequently inhumane in our conduct with others would seek a sort of release from responsibility, a crushing burden that is at the heart of religions such as Catholicism. It would be comforting, although there is always the possibility of being judged and found deficient. Would the maker be able to purge us of guilt, and would we be able to stretch our hands out and join it on a higher plane?

But the other possibility is the one in which the maker proves to be callously indifferent or even hostile to his or her creation. What if this being is no more ethically advanced than we are, and instead, has a greater scope for behaving in an extraordinarily cruel and vindictive way? Do we have the right to condemn this figure, as the character of the scientist Terrell in Bladerunner or Dr. Frankenstein in Mary Shelley’s novel are condemned, and should we not thereby aspire to liberate ourselves from these creator figures? As expressed by the character of David, the android, who does not wish to kill their parents?

This situation can’t help but evoke for me elements of Gnosticism, those early and alternative Christian theologies that emerged and competed with the official line of orthodoxy that was slowly being formulated in the first century after the death of Jesus Christ (who may or may not have been a historical figure). It postulated an imperfect world ruled by an imperfect god, but what was fascinating was that there was a conception of different levels or layers of creation, and the idea that there was, ultimately, a purer being above it all, one that ruled over imperfect and faulty gods who ruled over us. In the starkest term, and I am aware that this figure is not considered a true gnostic, it was presented as a dichotomy in the conception of Marcion between a “good” god, the one of the New Testament, and an angry and vindictive god, that of the old testament. One could escape by rejecting the false god, the being that had wrought so much destruction over humanity, and instead, one could aspire by the attainment of knowledge (gnosis) to return to the true fountainhead.

Such it the return that I imagine as envisioned in this film, in which we have indeed a new faith that is espoused by the two archeologist, Elizabeth Shaw (Noomi Rapace) and Charles Holloway (Logan Marshall-Green) who have discovered cave paintings in widely-different locations that depict what seems to be the same message. There is tall and elongated figure painted in profile, one standing and pointing up to the same constellation of stars. The gesture is evocative, and is interpreted as a message, and as with all mysterious messages, we can’t help but fill in the gaps with our hopes and fears.

Of course, the whole situation recalls the “theology” (I label it as such, rather than a scientific theory) of Erich von Daniken, the Swiss writer who in the 70s asserted the view that the evidence of past human contact with aliens was present in the architectural works and achievements of ancient humanity. He thus attributed to this contact the existence of the lines on the Nazca plain, in Peru, and the depiction of Mayan figures appearing to wield what might have been spaceships, in reliefs uncovered in ancient tombs, as well as the biblical appearance of the Chariot of Ezekiel blazing across the sky in a streaking flame, among many other instances. (This can’t be a theory because it is a hypothesis with selective information pieced together to justify it.)

This was not an empowering system of belief, because it seemed to rob ancient cultures of the same power of creative endeavor and achievement that we so readily grant to ourselves. And yet, as I child, I couldn’t help but shiver when I would view the “Chariots of the Gods” movies, and hope that, deep down inside, it was true. I was willing to let myself be seduced by this vision because I wanted to believe that contact could be resumed in the not-so-distant future, and that I as an individual could be redeemed. It was, then, a type of faith, the same sort of faith that led me to buy UFO magazines that featured mysterious photos of spacecraft captured over various terrains, and associated stories of alien contact. I wanted to be contacted, too.

But in Ridley Scott’s movie, this faith takes the form of active quest. There are the determined skeptics, people such as Meredith Vickes, the daughter of the tycoon Mr. Weyland, he being an aging tycoon who has financed an expedition costing one trillion dollars. There are the earnest believers, Elizabeth and her lover Charlie, who are the archeologists who first discovered the paintings, and who seek to find a form of closure to a story that seems incomplete. And there are also people who are indifferent, because they are grounded in daily concerns and refuse to speculate about theologies that seem abstract and distant. Perhaps it is dangerous to have too much faith.

Many of the same situations and motifs present in the earlier Alien franchise are present here. We have, once again, the scientists who are guilty of hubris, although in this case these scientists seem more like earnest accolytes. And we have the individuals who pursue their own private ends, who are motivated by the specter of the unknown and what it means for the passage of time to complete its work of destruction as well as creation. I am thinking, specifically, of Mr. Weyland, played by Guy Pearce, who has added himself to the crew without their knowledge, and who seeks contact with these makers as well, because as with the replicants in Bladerunner, he is in the process of dying and wishes to escape this fate. And we have wildly dangerous and seemingly indestructible alien creatures, the predators who snuff out all life with their insatiable appetite and who seem to be paragons of our insatiable consumer lifestyle. After all, can it not be said that we behave like these aliens? Do we not mercilessly consume the resources of the planet, and is it not true that we have appetites that can’t be satisfied? However terrifying these aliens are, we are permeated with their same drives, and if we are honest with ourselves, we also have a remarkable invasive capacity that blinds us to the needs of others and reduces everything else as a commodity to be consumed.

We have never really determined whether there is sentience in these creatures, although we’ve had tantalizing glimpses in past movies, in which the alien creatures also seem to possess their own society with their own “queens” and their own drones, a society they wish desperately to preserve. What would the alien franchise be if it were told from the point of view of the alien? Does it, also, have an undeniable right to preserve itself from extinction and to eliminate threats, those threats represented by humans, among others? Does it feel love for its own species, a love that is perhaps truer than that which is expressed by humanity?

This ponderings are not explicitly evident in the movie, but gestate in the minds of viewers such as myself. This is, after all, a thriller, a movie that is constructed so as to build and then release tension at predictable intervals. The movie pulsates in this way, but it doesn’t seem particularly novel, and this succession of tense moments has a way of exhausting the viewer.

In this installment we have as well the existence of another android, one played by Michael Fassbender, another impossibly lean and tall being who would seem to be a closer analogue to the figure portrayed in the cave drawings than any of the humans in the crew. And this android is, once again, treated with derision and dismissal, as an instrumentality to be utilized because it is alleged to have no soul and is thus, less than human. The formula is as follows then: non-human = servant. The analogy with the alien is all too obvious, because fears are also projected on the servant, in a parable of working relations and the psychological instability of capitalism. We see once again the evidence of blindness and obtuseness to moral questions on the part of the humans, who admire their creations but feel slightly threatened by them, and chose therefore to abuse/repress them, with constant verbal reminders of their inferiority. Could we as humans expect anything different from our “makers”? If so, are we not guilty of hubris?

Upon landing on the moon in this star system so distant from Earth (and one can’t help but wince at the howler of a statement uttered by the daughter of Mr. Weyland, who asserts that we are “half a billion miles” from Earth, an insignificant distance in the scale of light-years), the team readily shifts to action mode. There is little of the suggestion of meticulous preparation and caution on the part of the crew. They are always gung-ho, the way they are in male adventure epics, and what further proves destabilizing is the fact that the crew is conformed of iconoclasts and fairly unstable individuals. There seems to be little of a collective ethos, for these people have not been trained to work with each other; indeed, they seem only to make each other’s acquaintance after they wake up from suspended animation. (Thus, witness the awkward introduction between the biologist and the geologist.) Do Hollywood writers have any appreciation for the science of social cohesion, and the way in which these missions and the associated personnel must be assembled to insure the ability to cooperate? Is space travel so common that crews are randomly assembled in a way similar to a work crew at an ordinary office complex or gasoline station?

This is done, of course, for dramatic effect. Colorful characters and the admixture of what seem to be wildly incompatible people would seem to constitute a microcosm of our own unstable societies, especially of those agglomerations forced to coexist in closed circumstances. For some reason it makes me think of high school, with the presence of different social types, all subject to a natural hierarchy that seems all too recognizable. We have, after all, the jocks (those earthy people who joke with each other and play instruments, who swagger, who are always out for sexual conquest, and who are defined by their own espirit de corps), and the lonely and vulnerable types (the geologist, the biologist, Weyland’s daughter, the archeologists) who have their own private sub-realms. And, of course, we have the dominant and driven types who control means unavailable to others, who are defined by their aura of command, the ones who, in my analogy, drove to school in monstrous luxury cars, who were unassailable in their certainties and privelidges, and who able to assert was in effect their class dominance by virtue of their charm and their display. I’m thinking of Meredith, the heir-in-waiting to Weyland’s kingdom, played by the actress Charlize Theron, who delivers an icy performance, all ambition and frustration and outbursts of petulance.

Could it be that this collection of types is a conscious Hollywood formula meant to broaden the commercial appeal of these films? Does everything need to echo this formative experience of high school, at least when it comes to summer blockbusters? After all, these action movies rarely present complex and subtle emotional concerns, and we rarely have an erudite and witty exchange of dialogue. We have, instead, ideas that are traded in bubblegum formulas, situations that seem too simplistic and pat, too transparent, too easy to anticipate and, ultimately, too disappointing. How many times do we have to wish that the protagonists were more careful and systematic in their explorations? How many times do we have to urge them to be more patient and logical, to think before they act, to remember that they are no longer adolescents who obey the slightest whim and suffer as a consequence? I wish we had more complex and genuine dialogue and plotting, but we don’t, because these movies are not predicated on dialogue and complex human situations, they are predicated on action and the systematic milking of tension, with an overall note of dread that never seems to dissipate. These films are not poems, they are slogans, easy to absorb, easy ultimately to dismiss.

It is inevitable that the crew will be disappointed. The surprises don’t seem so shocking to us, for we have grown used to this disillusionment, and the dark atmosphere of dread and impending crisis pervading the move. Little hope for the elusive and beautiful ending of Stanley Kubrick’s classic “2001 A Space Odyssey”, one that was all the more powerful because it wasn’t telegraphed. We have instead the discovery that the survivor of the maker species, this species being humanoid in form although gigantic in size, with a jade-like quality in their coloring, is found by the android and awoken. A small group of crew members are there to greet it, since by then, the majority have been killed in various mishaps and encounters with aliens, they having been invaded and sucked by the energies of this menacing place. The encounter presents no joyful moment of reconciliation and acknowledged paternity, though.

The awoken maker isn’t the beneficent or nurturing god that had been constructed in the mind of the faithful such as Peter Weyland or Elizabeth Shaw. It turns out to be all-too-recognizable, capable of vicious brutality and callousness. It is the likeness of the parent as monster or the ancient Greek god Saturn, one who ate his progeny in order to eliminate any challenges to his rule. It quickly proceeds to decapitate the android and to kill the small group of survivors, all but Elizabeth, who runs out of the chamber disillusioned and supremely frightened.

Are we destined to always to be disappointed by our parents? Will we never be able to claim our inheritance and build upon successive generations of struggle? As expressed by the character of Meredith, the daughter of the tycoon Peter Weyland, there is a time for kings to rule and one for them to step aside. But the parent wields considerable power, and is loath to surrender his or her place. One wonders at the magnitude of the possible threat perceived by the awoken makers.

 How is it that a generation of advanced beings who must have a more ancient history than ours, and who with this advantage of additional thousands or even millions of years of existence, seems to be ethically at our same level? It is one of the eternal verities of existence that we fear our shadows? It is a truism that two cultures at different levels of technological and social development have difficulty communicating, and what we have seen, in the course of human existence and as described in a particularly enlightening way in Jarod Diamond’s recent “Guns, Germs and Steel”, is that selected cultures will dominate and inevitable displace and enslave others as a slightly different level of development (with the use of the “Guns” and “Steel” and other instrumentalities of technological development). How could we possibly bridge a gap of thousands or millions of years? And why is it that ethical development does not seem to accompany technological development in our imagination? Does anyone truly think that the conflictive and combative social and economic and political institutions that we have are a recipe for long-term survival? Does power transcend ethical concerns?

For all that is said about the android David (Michael Fassbender) not having a soul and not being able to understand human motive, this creature seems to be programed in such a way that he does almost appear to reveal human emotions. He would seem to be dismissive of human faith, and in one instance, where the crew manages to rescue an alien “maker” head and expose it to stimuli, provoking a small explosion, it seems almost dismissive in the way it states “mortal after all”. The android is aware of his/its difference, and also, of the impression it makes on others by the actions that it takes. It has no choice, it has been programmed to obey the commands of Mr. Weyland, even if it means experimenting on the human crew members. Will it, also, achieve a form of ethical enlightenment? In other ways it is, after all, stronger and more durable than humans. Perhaps, once again, too much power translates into ethical blindness. As portrayed by Michael Fassbender, he/it becomes a locus for both fear and hope, in a similar way as the maker species.

Now, how to explain the alien creatures, those reptilian, repulsive and slithering entities that seem extracted from our worst nightmares and that invade our bodies and gestate in rapid fashion, proceeding afterwards to burst out of our thoraxes in gruesome fashion? What evolutionary process could have led to the development of this extraordinary species, one that would seem capable of wiping away entire civilizations, capable of feeding according to a timespan of millions of years before contact with other species? It is a holocaust-producing species, but we are finally provided with an answer in this film. It harks back to contemporary concerns and our own imperial hubris. Perhaps the genesis of these creatures is also artificial, and they were created as we were, designed for a purpose. And what was this purpose? The ship’s pilot has a theory, and he labels them “weapons of mass destruction”. They were to be the impetus for a planetocide, and because they were too dangerous to handle on the home planet of their designers, they were instead fabricated in the equivalent of White Sands, New Mexico. They are the much more effective and monstrous equivalent of the atom bomb. And what we have is a saga for survival.

What I would have to criticize in the movie, apart from the relentless buildup and release of tension, the banal dialogue and the simplistic plotting (the cinematography and the visual design, inspired once again by H.R. Giger, are outstanding), is the acting. This seems unable to overcome the limitations of the summer blockbuster formula, and we have relationships that are conveyed in an unconvincing fashion. I question the bond between the archeologists, Elizabeth and Charlie, or the brittle steeliness of Meredith, Weyland’s daughter, or the single-minded obsessiveness of Mr. Weyland. The only enigmatic figure seems to be David, the android, but then again, this actor has won recent acclaim for many roles. (As I watched, I couldn’t decide precisely as to whether I was witnessing the birth of emotional depth and that ability to feel compassion for his maker in this character. Maybe that is what our gods need. Maybe they need to experience the compassion of their creations.) And in the end, we have another sequence in which the unlikely heroine survives against all odds, exhibiting “remarkable survival skills”. What is her power? Why is the figure of Sigourney Weaver (as Ripley, “believe it or not”) as reproduced in Elizabeth Shaw so compelling?

Maybe this woman symbolizes strength that is embodied, as ever, in the motherhood instinct. The woman, and not the old and bearded patriarch, is the symbol of worship in many matriarchal societies, and maybe womanhood is invested with an unquestioning maternal instinct that seeks not to suppress but to edify and nurture. What made the previous Alien films so compelling was this battle between the two queens to defend their respective species, and the male figures seem all too allusive to the failures of what are deemed “male” prerogatives, such as warfare. (Although I would point out that women also are capable of pursuing warfare and denying the humanity of their opponents, so my comment is not meant to elevate and enshrine the idea of a single-minded, nurturing female perspective.) Perhaps this search for the maker is, indeed, a return to the womb.

The movie ends with a cliffhanger that inevitably sets the stage for sequels. There seems to be only one female survivor, Elizabeth, although it might be a possibility that Meredith avoided being crushed by the falling maker spaceship. Elizabeth will be accompanied by the android David who has been liberated by the death of Mr. Weyland, and they will leave in one of the progenitors’ spaceships to seek the maker planet of origin and gain answers. What makes her so sure she will survive the encounter, when her survival up to this point has been so unlikely? And, what will happen to the new creature that has been left behind, the alien predator who, as in Alien IV, is also a fusion of human and alien DNA, and who might conceivably be an intelligent creature? Will it be able to learn how to fly one of the many maker spaceships left behind on that moon and follow? Will it now be involved in its own quest?

The movie seems vaguely unsatisfying although it does serve to purge much of the tension it creates. It is not so much a prequel as a continuation, for the formulas are very recognizable and repetitive. But then, if this were a truly bewildering and novel narrative, would it be satisfying? If the ending had been enigmatic, with a progenitor awaking and not attacking the aliens but not collaborating either, and instead engaging in inscrutable actions, practicing yoga or retreating or performing some other inexplicable act, would we have felt as if it truly was an encounter?

It is just as well that the alien didn’t speak, for if it had, uttering a series of banalities or homilies, then it would have deprived the movie franchise of its mystique, the way the writer Damon Lindelof did with the TV series “Lost”. I was looking for something more novel from Ridley Scott, but didn’t quite obtain it from this film. And, except for the wondrous opening scene, little of the wonder was left in this precursor to the franchise.



Eternal Observer -- ORomero (c) 2013
Copyrights ORomero 2013